Category Archives: Romanian Church

Come, Holy Spirit! Over 5,000 Words on over Fifty Years of Faithfulness to the Orthodox Church

Fifty Years of History; 2022: Departure of the Majority to the Romanian Orthodox Metropolia; The Ukraine; The Suicide of ROCOR; Eastern Papism; A New Local Church

Fifty Years of History

Q: Why is 2025 a significant year for you personally?

A: 2025 marks fifty years of faithfulness to the Orthodox Church and Faith, forty-seven of them in the Russian Church, three in the Romanian Church, and forty years as an Orthodox clergyman.

Q: When did you begin this journey?

A:  My conscious journey began in 1968, when I was twelve years old. I realised then that my destiny was in the Orthodox Church and set about studying Russian, though there had been contacts with two local White Russian families before that. However, as I was under age, I was not able to join the Church until I was eighteen. Six years of waiting. In 1973 I at last managed to visit an Orthodox church. This was the Russian émigré chapel inside the house on the corner of Canterbury Road in Oxford. Soon after, the chapel became a library with the late Rev Derwas Chitty’s books and magazines, as the new octagonal University chapel, now Greek, had been opened in the garden outside.

Q: Why did you join the Russian Church?

A: Hobson’s choice, as they say in Cambridge! The only other Local Churches present in this country then, the Greek and the Serbian, would just tell you to go away. ‘You are not one of us’. They were ethnic clubs. Therefore, you had no choice. Only the two Russian jurisdictions would accept you. Not that they were very gracious about it either. They gave you the impression that they would accept you, but they would have preferred not to. Only because the elderly Russian emigres had no political power or money and were dying out, did some of them accept you. Many told us they would sooner die out than accept ‘foreigners’. They also entertained bitter political divisions and polemics, which you just had to put up with and make sense of.

2022: Departure of the Majority to the Romanian Orthodox Metropolia

Q: In 2022 three-quarters of the ROCOR Diocese in England, the so-called ‘Colchester Diocese’, though it stretches to Coventry and Manchester, that is, many ROCOR parishes, 5,000 people and 15 clergy, including three Western rite clergy, left ROCOR and 12 of you (all except for the Western riters) joined the Romanian Church. So do you regret that you had worked for forty-seven years for the unity of the divided three parts of the Russian Church?

A: No, not at all! To work for unity is always good. Without unity Churches fall out of communion and eventually become sects. This is my real experience, I have seen this and lived this. This is what began to happen to the two Russian émigré Churches, the smaller one based in Paris and the larger one based in New York, after the last emigres who had been adults and known the realities of Russia before 1917 had died out and direct contact with reality was lost.

After them, by the early 2000s, the sectarian fantasies, to the left and to the right, in both of them became ever stronger. The Paris group began falling away definitively towards liberal secularism under masonic sponsorship and the New York group began falling away definitively into old calendarist sectarianism under CIA sponsorship, like that of the elderly CIA Colonel Magerovsky. We were eyewitnesses to both and knew all the personalities involved, writing vigorously against both extremist tendencies. There was only one way out for them, to rejoin the broad Centre, which could hold everyone together.

Indeed, we finally got both parts into communion with the Centre in Moscow and so with each other, just in time, with many of the extremists falling away, 47% of the Paris group and 5% of the New York group. However, ironically, our triumph lasted only a little more than one year, for they fell out of communion with each other again. The fault here was entirely that of the very aggressive, old calendarist pharisee-bishops of New York, who had remained in ROCOR or infiltrated it after unity and were wreaking havoc. This took place after set in the dementia of the ever-memorable Metr Hilarion, who had no idea what they were doing in his name. The schism came in December 2020. Only one bishop resisted, the anti-sectarian and anti-rebaptiser Archbishop Peter of Chicago, who had been an altar boy to St John, but who has since died. His see is now without a permanent bishop and many there are now out of control.

Q: Why did the Centre in Moscow not try and hold the two émigré parts together?

A: As the Russians say of themselves, ‘We are slow to harness, but quick to ride’. In other words, Moscow is very passive, it does nothing for, say, twenty years despite all the warnings of the coming explosion from the grassroots, and then, too late, after the explosion, it overreacts to the extreme. This is the result of not working incrementally and being pastorally interested, only politically interested. Firstly, Moscow had, and refused to have, little or any understanding of the provincial Russian emigration and its petty political arguments. Secondly, Moscow was distracted from pastoral care by international politics, for by that time Moscow had itself fallen out of communion with the Greeks, after the grossly uncanonical actions of the Greeks in the Ukraine, breaking the first canons of the Apostles. Again, here too, Moscow overreacted.

Here we see how the fall from communion with the Greeks by the Centre affected the rest. Lack of communion is like an infection, a virus. So all our work for unity was undone by the Moscow error of overreaction to the Greek error, splitting off from the Church. Then, not having turned the other cheek, Moscow ‘did a Constantinople’, by interfering in the jurisdiction of Alexandria in Africa. Little wonder that people then began to say that ‘Moscow is as bad as Constantinople’.

Q: What do you do, if even the Centre is infected by the spirit of disunity and without principles tolerates sectarianism, and ignores schism and even the heresy of rebaptising Orthodox?

A: In such a case, you must transfer to a canonical Local Church which is not infected with the disease of schism and has a Diaspora structure. Today, that means neither the Russians, nor the Greeks. As I had been to seminary in the 1970s and a couple of the seminarians had become bishops, namely in the Serbian and Romanian Churches, and since I had been around for a long time and had met lots of other bishops since then and many had read the translations of my writings into Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian, German and Czech, we had a choice of where to go. After the Russian betrayal of us in the Non-schismatic Diaspora, all the others offered to protect us from the new, brutal, sectarian, uncanonical and anti-pastoral ROCOR. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

The Ukraine

Q: What was the connection between your departure for the Romanian Patriarchate and the conflict in the Ukraine?

A: None, directly. We were received by our old friend, the very experienced Metr Joseph (Pop) of the four-million strong Autonomous Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe of the Romanian Orthodox Church on 16 February 2022, as proved by the documents issued on that day (despite the blatant lies of others on the internet who said that those documents were forged (!), much to the shock of Metr Joseph – he did not know that bishops can lie). Now that was eight days before the new phase of the Ukrainian conflict began on 24 February.

It was providential that we had left before that conflict, because then we did not have to face the deep and bitter divisions among the flock which the commemoration of Patriarch Kyrill has brought to all Russian parishes, especially in ROCOR, though it happens even inside Russia. There anti-war Orthodox are also boycotting the Church in very large numbers, not least after the ‘defrocking’ and exiling of liberal but popular priests like Fr Alexei Uminsky.

The reason why we left was the schism which occurred with the official introduction of the heresy of rebaptism of Orthodox under old calendarist pressure, not the problem of the Ukraine. Our departure was clearly not directly connected with the intensified conflict in the Ukraine eight days later, on 24 February, but there was still an indirect connection. This is because both the heresy of rebaptism and the scandalous support for a war against other Orthodox were caused by exactly the same lack of pastoral leadership. The chasm between the bishops on the one hand and the suffering priests and people on the other hand, whom the bishops have been persecuting, opened up for exactly the same reason.

Q: But you seem to support the Russian side in the conflict in the Ukraine?

A: Not at all, that is not true. No clergyman can support war and violence. However, as a political observer and cultural historian, who knows very well both Russia and the Ukraine, both officially and unofficially, and has met both recent Patriarchs and President Putin, and who also perfectly well knows the aggression and hypocrisy of the West, several things were obvious.

Firstly, it was obvious from the very outset that, as a Great Power, Russia would win that deeply tragic and catastrophic conflict. That is not support, it is just a recognition of an obvious fact. It was also clear that the Kiev regime was Fascist and atheist and was acting simply as a proxy of the highly aggressive USA and the EU. It was obvious that the anti-Ukrainian regime in Kiev existed only because NATO was using it to try and destroy Russia and grab its wealth, for the Ukraine is the last chance of the West to dominate the world and pay off its colossal debts. It was also plain for all to see that the Kiev regime had been persecuting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and all the minorities there (and the Russians in the Ukraine are a minority of 40%!) for years. Blood is on their hands – the Russians did not start this.

Moreover, the CIA and Constantinople support for the fake Church, the OCU, under Dumenko, is an abuse of the canons, on the same level as the abuse of the canons by others, as is the present ‘defrocking’ of bishops of Cyprus for their faithfulness to Christ in refusing to recognise the fake Church. The latter has totally discredited the Church of Cyprus, which kowtows to discredited Constantinople and the local US ambassador. Frankly, there is something quite satanic in the Kiev regime, as it closes hundreds of churches, threatens to turn them into casinos and propagandises LGBT.

It was also obvious that the Ukrainian people, especially the real Orthodox there, were the victims of that war. And finally, it was manifest that the ignorant and arrogant Western mainstream media, financed by the CIA and MI6, which are themselves financed by the Military Financial Complex of the USA and the UK, supported the Kiev Nazis because they could make a lot of money out of such a conflict. They told plain lies. It was the same in Britain in the First World War, where the newspapers which were owned by millionaire arms merchants told the same type of lies.

The Suicide of ROCOR

Q: How did ROCOR come to discredit and destroy itself?

A: All too many in the Russian episcopate now appear to want to suck money out of the parishes in order to finance their ‘superior’, oligarchic lifestyle and then in return sadistically punish the selfsame priests and parishes for telling the truth and living as Christians, also trying to destroy their families. Such bishops, whether inside or outside Russia, claim that they are acting according to the canons and that any who refuse to accept their vicious persecutions and slanders are committing the ultimate sin of refusing to participate in their evil. That apparently is ‘uncanonical’!

Clearly, these people are not Christians. It would be laughable if it were not so sad. We are obedient to Christ, not to those who are de facto filioquists, that is, who claim to have replaced Christ and so put their clearly twisted interpretations of the canons above the Holy Spirit. Their lust for power and money is what has temporarily corrupted the Russian Church, just as it has Constantinople. The Russian émigré Churches had never suffered from that disease, as they had neither power, nor money, which was precisely their glory, but they had died out by the early 2000s. We saw their last generation between 1975 and 2000.

The local example of a recent convert was of one who suffered from narcissistic rages and tantrums, throwing his toys out of his pram and acting as a typical unprincipled bully. Uneducated and ignorant, humiliating those who had been in the Church before he was even born, he threatened all with a metaphorical baseball bat. He was a kind of ecclesiastical Trump, wanting only to ‘grab property’ (the words of our outraged solicitor who examined his shameless claims in astonishment – she had never seen anything like it, even in the secular world) and dominate, without any understanding of local languages, history, geography, customs etc. Moscow now knows all about him, since the scandal he caused in the altar of a church in Paris last year, when he had to be restrained by another bishop from his aggressive rage and threat of violence.

Q: Was ROCOR’s entry into schism and even heresy inevitable?

A: No, not at all. As far back as 1997, a friend of mine, the late Fr Roman Lukianov in Boston USA, warned that ROCOR risked becoming a sect, as the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva, successor of St John, had reposed in 1993. For decades Vladyka Antony had been the great moderating influence inside ROCOR against the American crazies. He was rightly concerned, as were others of us.

I remember one old aristocratic émigré in London, who had worked for MI6 (so many of them did) in Iran in the 1950s (himself he just said that he had worked for ‘The Foreign Office’, which was well-understood code). He said that no unity between ROCOR and the MP was possible because ROCOR was like a glass of pure water and the MP was like a glass of dirty water. I asked him then why St Matrona of Moscow and St Luke of the Crimea had been in the MP? Then I asked him why were there so many scandals in ROCOR, with the Grabbe affair, his ‘six million dollar’ son, and the defrocking for good canonical reasons of immoral priests and why there were so many ROCOR parishes that did not have priests? He simply answered that he had never heard of any of that! In other words, it was all ignorance and bigotry. It was the usual phariseeism of those who see the speck in others, but not the log in their own eye.

In fact, despite such people, ROCOR did not become a sect and ten years later it even entered back into communion with Moscow, then presided over by a former émigré, the ever-memorable Patriarch Alexis II. That was a miracle. I witnessed it. ROCOR through the ever-memorable Metr Laurus had received the most generous canonical agreement from the Patriarch, becoming a self-governing part of the Russian Church. ROCOR had basically become an Autonomous Church of the Diaspora. This had been exactly our hope all along. My only regret was that it had taken so long. Patriarch Alexis, whom I knew, had already made the same offer in about 1995! Seven years had been wasted after the revolutionary 2000 Jubilee Council in Moscow when all our just demands had been met.

With such an agreement to autonomy, ROCOR could therefore have avoided all the controversy of the later Russian schism with the Greeks and the conflict in the Ukraine and not broken communion with but co-operated with the other Local Churches. (By other Local Churches, I do not include the leadership of the Greek Churches, whose policies were purely political, dictated to them and paid for by the CIA).

But instead of using its autonomy and working with the concert of the politically free Local Churches, self-governing ROCOR showed no independence from Moscow at all, except to express CIA views of the Kiev regime! It not only entered into schism from the Greeks, but also took several priests from the Greek Church without letters of release, and accepted in silence the persecution of priests like Fr Alexei Uminsky. All this was because it did not want to recognise the Catholicity of the Church, but to be a schismatic ghetto-group, actually denying the sacraments of other local Churches, against its own people.

Q: But you must admit that ROCOR had long been a breeding ground for schism?

A: Yes, there had been the Bostonite old calendarist schism in, I think, 1986, when about 2,000 left, the tiny old calendarist schisms in France in 1987 and 2001, then the four schisms in the USA and England of 2007. But each time the numbers who left for all these various warring ‘True Orthodox’ sects were minute, often fewer than 500, sometimes as few as 50. The ROCOR Centre had remained firm.

And all those schisms proved just how necessary it was for ROCOR to enter into canonical communion with Moscow and to eliminate the sectarian spirit of hatred and division for ever. Those schisms also proved how ROCOR had for years been attracting the wrong sort of people, pathological extremists and the dissatisfied, sometimes second-generation immigrant Russians with their inferiority complexes and fantasies about pre-Revolutionary Russia, sometimes weird converts from Protestant sects, very often with sexual problems.

These are the sort of people who call normal Orthodox ‘World Orthodox’ and themselves, in their narcissistic and pharisaical pride, ‘True Orthodox’. There is no such thing as ‘World Orthodox’. True, there can be worldly or lapsed Orthodox, but they do not go to church and therefore, they are not Orthodox. An Orthodox is one who goes to church, unlike so many of the internet Orthodox who dare to call themselves ‘True Orthodox’. The only ‘True Orthodox’ are the saints of God, to whose state all Orthodox aspire.

Today, there are all of us who left ROCOR from 2021 on, in the USA, in England and elsewhere. Only this time we left not for weird and schismatic sectarian groups, but for the mainstream Local Churches, anti-Bartholomew Constantinople (those who joined Constantinople in the USA and Paris refuse to have anything to do with his fake Ukrainian Church) and then Bucharest, which welcomed us all with open arms and great sympathy, as heroic witnesses and refugees from ROCOR schism and heresy.

This time it was the scandal-ridden ROCOR itself which had become a weird and schismatic sectarian group. True, there were others in ROCOR who were too weak and fearful, including one bishop and several clergy, who did not leave for other Local Churches, but simply gave up and resigned in disgust at the lack of canonicity and corruption they had seen inside the new ROCOR. This is the end of ROCOR, its suicide. It has outlived its sell-by date.

Q: But what do you think about the anti-Moscow Patriarchate ROCOR Synod statement of 5 June?

https://www.synod.com/synod/eng2025/20250605_ensynodstatement.html

A: This was a clearly provoked by the very recent Sister Vassa debacle and the numbers of Russians leaving ROCOR in the USA and withdrawing their donations, since the documents contains nothing new and could have been written years ago. (Why wasn’t it written then? Well, as American say, ‘Follow the money’). It was clearly written by the German Metr Mark and his entourage, who have been running the Synod ever since they removed Metr Vitaly in 2001.

It is a document that deals only with the past of 70-90 years ago and fails utterly to address the present, the elephant in the room, the war in the Ukraine. The liberals will rightly mock the document as too little, too late. However, there is even worse.

From the Moscow viewpoint, the ROCOR document is scandalous. It is well known that the German Diocese of Metr Mark still has many children and grandchildren of Vlasovites (Russians who fought with Hitler) in it. For Russians in Russia Stalin was the victor of 1945, just as for British people Churchill (who was just as racist as Hitler) was the victor in 1945. And Vlasov was a traitor. Any attack of this manner on Stalin is seen as Nazi and therefore as support for the Nazis in Kiev, who are have been killing Russian civilians and children ever since 2014, with the support of the grandchildren of Nazis in Berlin and Brussels.

This statement has quite rightly outraged Moscow, especially since it has Vlasovite and CIA connections. It was 27 million Soviet citizens who were massacred by the Nazis between 1941 and 1945. Victory came when Stalin was the Soviet leader. Why is ROCOR, with its close Vlasov and CIA connections meddling in internal affairs in Russia? If Moscow ditches ROCOR, then it will lose its last shreds of a claim to canonicity and become officially the schismatic sect that it already is. For the quite correct Russian reaction, see:

https://ruskline.ru/news_rl/2025/06/06/sinod_rpcz_nastupaet_na_te_zhe_grabli

Q: Today ROCOR is attracting many young men. So ROCOR is not finished?

A: All Orthodox dioceses in the Diaspora are receiving many young people today. This is due to the internet effect of various influencers. But we have to be very careful and receive only the serious, not the beardy-weirdy. With such people the lapse rate is extremely high. I am now receiving at least one young person a month, though as many young women as men, including refugees from ROCOR sectarianism, now that they have understood their mistake. ROCOR is once more attracting the wrong sort of young men, the terminally online, the exclusivists, incels, woman-haters, closet homosexuals, bisexuals, extremists, narcissists, internet Orthodox. You cannot build a Church on their exclusivist pathology and hatred, and yet ROCOR usually ordains such young men, preferring them to the normal!

Thus, they claim that Orthodoxy is ’manly’ and ‘masculine’. But what about women? Are they not allowed? Why are they against family life and children? Clearly, all this is internet fantasy. Russian churches especially have always been filled with women, 80% or 90%. But you will not learn about that reality from the internet. Those remaining in ROCOR just never learn. They are just making it worse for themselves. All we can do is to pray for their repentance despite their schism and heresy.

Eastern Papism

Q: Why did some Russian hierarchs fall into exactly the same error as the Greek (Constantinople) Church before it, by proclaiming themselves to be some sort of Eastern Papacy?

A: Only about 2% of Orthodox belong to the Greek jurisdiction of Constantinople, whereas 70% (140 million) belong to that of Moscow. Moscow therefore thinks that it is No 1. However, Constantinople maintains that as the Church of the former Imperial Capital (which fell nearly 600 years ago!), it is the ‘first without equals’, that is, No 1.

Now promoting yourself as ‘No 1’ is precisely the heresy of Papism, which directly contradicts the Gospel, where Christ calls on us to serve others, not to lord it over others. The First Rome fell because it wanted to dominate. Those who call themselves the Second Rome and the Third Rome have learned nothing from its fall and have instead chosen to imitate that exact same ‘Roman’ fall. It is the sin of Rome-ism, even though you may call it worldliness, secularism, erastianism or Sergianism.

Fortunately, the Church works through Catholicity, not through becoming a State (the First Rome), ancient prestige (the Second Rome) or through size (the Third Rome). A Council of the whole Church, all sixteen Local Churches, is the solution to this childish division. In any case, as a result, both Moscow and Constantinople have punished themselves. Today Moscow is being reduced in size, losing a third of its territories and parishes, and as for Constantinople, it is losing the last shreds of its prestige, making itself into a laughing-stock, as one bishop after another in the Church of Cyprus is ‘defrocked’ for the ‘heresy’ of disagreeing with Constantinople!

Both Moscow and Constantinople are punished by the sin that they sinned with, as the Book of Proverbs says. God is not mocked. Meanwhile the real Church, the other fourteen Local Churches, goes on together with the many healthy elements within both Moscow and Constantinople are in accord. This is not a sickness unto death, for repentance is possible.

A New Local Church

Q: What after fifty years of struggle do you think of the chances of a new Local Church being established?

A: I have always believed that I would not live to see it, but I have always fought for it, for the sake of our children and grandchildren. It is still for the future and despite the present Greek and Russian squabble we are far closer to it than fifty years ago, when it was an impossible dream and even services in local languages hardly existed. The present schism does not fill me with pessimism because people in their eighties die. What is frightening is that people of that age appear to feel no repentance.

The point is that over the last fifty years I have seen both the Russian Church in the Diaspora and the Greek (Constantinople) Church dying out. Why? Because they stuck to what for the new Western-born generations of Russians and Greeks were foreign languages, Slavonic and Greek. They do not understand a word of them. The decision not to use local languages was suicide, the ethnic funeral of the Church.

On top of that, what possible missionary witness do you give to Non-Orthodox, if you do not even speak the local language and understand the local culture? Did the Apostles go around speaking in a foreign language to preach the Gospel? No, they spoke in the local language. This is one of the meanings of Pentecost. To speak in tongues does not mean to speak in gibberish in a wave of hysterical self-exaltation, like crazy Evangelicals and Pentecostalists. It means to work in order to learn another language, its culture and customs, in order to inculturate the Orthodox Christian Faith and so bring people to Christ.

St Nicholas of Japan, St Tikhon of Moscow and St John of Shanghai are recent examples, for they did exactly this. They did not impose, they set examples. All we have to do is follow them. For instance, when Japan started its proxy war against Russia with its undeclared surprise attack on Russia, St Nicholas told his Japanese clergy to pray for their armed forces and locked himself away to pray for the duration. Here is our example.

Q: And what about the chances of achieving an Autocephalous Local Church today?

A: Firstly, most Local Churches do not even have a Diaspora jurisdiction, so they are not concerned by the question.

Secondly, many of the Churches that do have a Diaspora jurisdiction would never give autocephaly to their Diaspora jurisdiction for ethnic reasons, especially if that jurisdiction is small. So there is no hope that in Western Europe, for example, the Serbian, Bulgarian, Georgian or Antiochian Churches will ever grant autocephaly. This means that only the big three, the Greek, Russian or Romanian Churches could ever give autocephaly in Western Europe. True, the Romanian Church gave autonomy several years ago, but not autocephaly for very good canonical reasons, for which see below.

Thirdly, there is the question of local people who have joined that Church. This is all about missionary work. Ghetto-churches will never give autocephaly. Why should they? They are precisely not local and do not want to be local! But if there were large numbers of local people in a Church, then it would have to receive autocephaly. This so far is not the case anywhere, the numbers of native people accepting Orthodoxy have been very small.

Fourthly, there is the question of size. For example, the Greek Church is by far the largest in North America and Australia, the Antiochian the largest in South America, whereas the Romanian Church has in the last 15 years become by far the largest in Western Europe. In those regions, we must hope that the largest group would take responsibility and draw towards autocephaly. However, more of this in the final point below.

Finally, there is the issue of ability to get on with others, i.e, the absence of nationalism and narrow jurisdictionalism and even worse, of sectarianism. This disqualifies the Greek and now the Russian Churches, one of whose bishops told our Romanians and Moldovans that, ‘I don’t like Romanians and I only half-like Moldovans’. This is racism, chauvinism on the same level as Constantinople’s.

The fact is that the Greek Church of Constantinople has never voluntarily given or recognised genuine autocephaly to anyone because of its centralising tendencies, neither to the Serbs, nor to the Russians, nor to the Romanians and, most obviously, nor to the Bulgarians, nor to the Poles, nor to the Czechs and Slovaks, nor to the Macedonians today. Even the ‘autocephaly’ the Greeks recently gave to the Ukrainian schismatics is completely fake. Their fake Church of gangsters and thugs has no independence and depends entirely on CIA cash. Even in history, when the Copts and the Armenians broke away from Orthodoxy, the main reason was their nationalist reaction to Greek racism.

With the suicide of ROCOR and its schism from the Paris Archdiocese of the Russian Church, in Western Europe the Russians have now done exactly the same thing as the Greeks, excluding most Ukrainians, Moldovans and normal local Western Europeans from the Russian Church, that is, becoming like the Greeks a nationalistic ghetto-Church. There is only one option left – the Romanians.

Are the Romanians up to the job? I can affirm that many are, the publishing efforts in English and French of the Romanian Dioceses are formidable. But is that enough? Only time will tell. What is certain that no one Local Church can give autocephaly. It must be done in concert, which is why Bucharest did not give us autocephaly, only autonomy. Thus, there is no room either for nationalism, nor sectarianism.

Q: What might a new Local Church look like?

A: I see it as a group of bishops, with their flocks of different nationalities, presiding in turn for a fixed term over the new Local Church, its autocephaly granted collectively by all the Local Churches concerned. Each bishop would have his own diocese, Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek, Georgian, Romanian, Russian and Antiochian. We must avoid the error of the Greeks who set up episcopal assemblies. These failed and no longer operate because the Greeks wanted to dominate them and sat in permanent control over them, heavy-handedly trying to impose their views. That is not the way to go. There must be complete respect and freedom for different languages, calendars and customs, not to mention different attitudes towards ecumenism. There must be no interference from the Mother-Churches. Autocephaly must mean autocephaly. There is no other way.

Mitred Archpriest Andrew Phillips,

Pentecost 2025

 

 

 

 

10 May 2025: A Historic Celebration in London

After 75 years of presence, the Romanian Orthodox Church in Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been formed into an Archdiocese with its own Archbishop Athanasius/Atanasie (Rusnak). Aged 43, he is a Russian-speaking Moldovan, as we had hoped we would have, by background an engineer. He is highly educated, having studied in France and the USA and speaks five languages fluently (not through Google translate!). Archbishop Atanasie was previously bishop in Italy and has now been transferred here, to our great delight.

Vladica lives at the monastery in Stanbridge near Luton, where we have been many times and spoken to Vladica, in front of the photographs of his, and our, beloved spiritual fathers, Metr Kallistos (Ware) (Eternal Memory!) and dear Fr Raphael (Noica). Vladica calls Fr Raphael his ‘spiritual grandfather’, which is most interesting, as he was my spiritual father. This is logical, because Vladica is exactly a generation younger than myself, but we have the same spiritual and theological heritage.

The Archdiocese is part of the expanding Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe, with its bishops in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Iceland and now Great Britain. In the last twenty years of intense immigration and missionary conversion of native people, it is now four million strong, and has many monasteries and convents. The Metropolia is led by the dynamic Metropolitan Joseph (Pop), who is respected internationally for his love of the monastic life, his knowledge, experience and pastoral wisdom. Its Synod of Bishops and network of parishes and monasteries is now the centre of hope for a future multinational Local Church of Western Europe.

On Saturday 10 May we celebrated the Divine Liturgy and Vladica’s Enthronement at our new St George’s Cathedral in Enfield in North London. Present were 14 bishops, Romanian, Moldovan and French, some 120 priests from the for now 90 Romanian parishes in this country and abroad. The Cathedral was packed, even though the Enthronement had to be by invitation only, as so many thousands wanted to come. The service was mainly in Romanian, but parts of it were celebrated and sung in English, as all realise that the use of English is essential in order to keep the children in the Church.

Present was Romanian Orthodox Trinitas TV, the Lord Chamberlain, representing King Charles, who so loves Romania and Romanian culture, as well as the Romanian ambassador, Dame Laura, whom we know very well. Old friends from the Serbian, Georgian, Antiochian and Greek Churches and from the canonical Russian Church under Bishop Matthew of Sourozh were present.  They all concelebrated, except for the latter because of the political dispute between the Russian Church with the Greek Church, one of whose bishops concelebrated, but he did take communion with us.

Fortunately, despite its dispute with the Greek Church, the canonical Russian Church is in full communion with the Romanian Church. The Sourozh group recognises the sacraments of other Orthodox, unlike the schismatic Russians, who tried to steal and close our church (when it remained open in faithfulness), actively slandered us and made death threats. Why other Russian Orthodox bishops tolerate such behaviour remains a mystery, though the schismatic and violent ‘Russian’ has had to be restrained by the canonical Russians.

The Romanian and Moldovan Diaspora in this country now numbers over one million and the Church is growing rapidly, with many ordinations of properly qualified and educated, seminary-trained young men to the clergy. More are now training at the largely Romanian-run Theological Institute in Cambridge, including three more candidates from our ever-expanding Colchester parish, as well as in the Romanian Institutes in Paris and Rome. Within a few years, there is no reason to think that the total number of parishes, each of which is already attended by hundreds every Sunday, will not grow to several hundred.

Just in the last few weeks, large churches have been bought in Southampton in southern England and in Dundee, in Scotland and consecrations are going ahead. The Church is young and energetic, as witnessed to by the vibrant Cathedral choir, there are many children, and the average age of clergy and people is about 35. Many, especially women, dressed in national costume for the celebration. Although in Colchester we do about 150 baptisms a year, another parish does 1,000 a year. After the celebration all the priests were awarded a pectoral cross and certificate/gramota in honour of the event.

Afterwards, 300 of us, including ‘the Colchester Diocese’, as we are known(!), attended the reception at a Romanian-owned hotel complex with large grounds, situated in Elstree. We had a very nice dinner at 4,00 pm and were able to talk to several bishops, including the new young Moldovan Bishop Benjamin, and learned many interesting and positive things, especially from Metropolitan Joseph, who is so kind to us.

Vladica related to us events at the consecration of the new Serbian bishop in Paris last year. (I studied at seminary in Paris with the former Bishop, the now departed Bishop Luka in the 1970s. Eternal Memory!). We were very touched by the words of Archbishop Atanasie who said to us: ‘Thank you for everything you do for us’. These words rang in our ears. It is clear that we will be able to continue to help the Romanian Church with liturgical texts in English, as we have already done over the last ten years, as well as with the many Ukrainians and Russians who come to us, refugees in search of a non-political Church.

Having set out at 5.00 on Saturday morning, we returned home at 10.00 in the evening, very tired, but very happy on this historic day. We now look forward to Vladica’s visit to us on All Saints Day, 15 June. The Church moves forward by leaps and bounds, in the mainstream of the Orthodox Life, as we look forward to the future, away from the petty nationalistic and ideological political disputes of others in the past.

 

Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the Future of the Orthodox Church in Western Europe after the Western Defeat in the Ukraine

The colonial era is widely accepted to have started in the 15th century…, but in fact colonialism started in the 11th century.

Fadi Lama, Why the West Can’t Win, Clarity Press, 2023

Introduction

Europe

The 10 million square kilometres of what has for several centuries been called Europe is divided into two almost equal halves. The Eastern half is populated very largely by East Slavs and consists of only three countries. It stretches from the Urals in the Russian Federation to the borders of Belarus and the future Ukraine (when the borders of the Ukrainian people have at last been self-determined). It has a population of some 185 million, if we include the smaller numbers who live beyond the Urals, as far as the Pacific coast. The vast majority of them are baptised Orthodox Christians.

The Western half stretches westwards from those borders to the Atlantic coasts of Iceland, Ireland and Portugal. Unlike the Eastern half of Europe, the Western half is divided into forty-one countries and is populated by different races, with some 555 million people, three times more than in the Eastern half. Most of the countries in the far West have since the eleventh century colonised much of the world. By background these are mainly the new Roman Catholics or Protestants, but there are also 55 million of the much older, original Orthodox Christian population, mostly living in the smaller and poorer countries.

Part One

The Eastern Half of Europe After the Conflict in the Ukraine

The future of Russia was already clear to Tsar Nicholas II (+ 1918), who wanted to restore Russia to the era of Tsardom before the Western-minded imperialist, Peter I (+ 1725). Tsar Nicholas II was prevented by aristocratic traitors from this restoration, as he rejected their feudal system of serfdom of the Russian Empire (1721-1917). In his turn, President Putin has today rejected the anti-Russian system of atheism of the Soviet Empire (1917-1991) and the Western system of capitalism of the corrupt oligarchy of the three countries of East Slavdom (1992-2022). This 300-year period and its illusions ended, ironically, thanks to Western sanctions, illegally and suicidally applied to the Russian Federation, after the conflict in the eastern Ukraine became large-scale.

In other words, after a 300-year interruption, Russia and all the East Slavs are about to return to the period of Pre-Imperial Tsardom. This means economic sovereignty and independence, not subservience to the Western Powers and their Globalist ideology. Unlike the Feudal-Capitalist period of the past 300 years (1721-2022), which was chiefly concerned with money-making, as loved by pseudo-White, that is anti-Tsar, Russian emigres, and then by Westernised oligarchs, Tsardom also means social justice. The Revolution came about precisely because of the lack of injustice. Like all Orthodox Christians, Orthodox Russians are socially conservative, but also value social justice, the sources of stable family life and stable national life. Here is the future.

The Western Half of Europe After its Defeat in the Ukraine

The first and second parts of the Great European War, known as World War One and World War Two, were caused by imperialist rivalries in Western Europe, notably the British elite Round Table’s and the German Kaiser’s ambition to exercise global hegemony, controlling the whole world. Through its failed aggression, in 1916 that British ruling class ended up having to begin to cede its dreamed-of global hegemony to the US elite. Failing to manipulate the US for its own purposes, later even the arch-manipulator, the half-American Churchill, was to see his beloved British Empire dismantled by the US. The present conflict in the Ukraine, which is as close to World War Three as we can get, was caused by the similar ambition of the US elite. It tried to reproduce the dream of the British ruling class, to exercise global hegemony, killing ‘to the last Ukrainian’.

That conflict has already lasted for over three years, for ‘as long as it takes’ (= for as long as it takes for the Ukraine to collapse). The EU and UK still refuse to admit the defeat of their Ukrainian proxy. They are too proud to lose face and admit defeat and so continue to justify themselves and talk about making war and not peace (strangely these warmongers want to take part in peace talks!). This refusal to accept reality is so deranged that it is delusional. Thus, the coming end of the Nazi Ukraine will also be the end of the Nazi EU fantasy. In reality, Europe does not exist, there are only the at present forty-one countries of Western Europe. After the eventual collapse of the EU and the UK, the approximately 555 million people of the forty-one nations of Western Europe may perhaps divide into four Regional Confederations of Sovereign Nations.

Part Two

Four Regional Confederations in Western Europe

In the Southern half of 280 million, the two Regional Confederations could be that of the at present eight largely Latin countries of South-Western Europe (France, Monaco, Italy, San Marino, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Andorra, numbering some 185 million), and that of the sixteen countries of South-Eastern Europe (Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus, numbering some 95 million). This smaller group, with its large Orthodox presence would naturally be close to Russian-oriented Eastern Europe.

In the Northern half of 275 million, the two Regional Confederations could be that of the at present ten largely Germanic countries of Northern Europe (Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ireland and the British Isles, numbering some 110 million), and that of the at present seven largely Germanic countries of Western and Central Europe: the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Poland, numbering some 160 million). These two Northern Confederations have much in common, as do the two Southern Confederations. Perhaps they would combine?

Old and New Countries

However, new countries, forced apart into separate countries for purely political reasons, and those artificially constructed from regions of their neighbours, could reform and reunite. Thus, on the one hand, the now politically divided Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and perhaps Bosnia-Herzegovina, could reunite into one. On the other hand, the territory of Belgium could be returned to its three component countries, the Netherlands, France and Germany, of which it was artificially composed. And although we presume that Italy and Germany will remain united, this is not certain. Notably, there are great differences between eastern and western Germany and northern and southern Italy.

On the other hand, centralised Spain could at last cede independence to Catalonia and the artificial union of the UK, a failed state, could dissolve back into England, Scotland and Wales. These could finally reclaim their freedom and independence from Britain, and with the long overdue reuniting of Ireland. Thus, that ruthless band of colonial Vikings, raiders and traders (much the same thing), who formed and imposed the British Establishment in their Crusade in 1066, began their worldwide aggression. Their wicked legacy is continued by the British State and its propaganda mouthpieces over nearly a millennium, may at last disappear. Such possible changes would still leave a Western Europe of forty-one countries.

Part Three

The Russian Rejection of a Western European Orthodox Church

In this new reality of Western Europe (effectively, Non-Russian Europe) and Eastern Europe (effectively, Russian Europe), what is the future of Orthodox Christianity in this Western half of Europe? In the last four years, the Russian Church has refused to tackle its own internal schism there, caused by the sociopathic hatred among its converts and their breach of internal communion. If, as it seems, Russian nationalism has taken hold and indifference to Non-Russians is now the norm, the Russian Church will indeed lose everything outside the Russian Federation, where it has already rejected its age-old, best friends. It seems to have turned its back on the West, rejecting the legacy of the old Russian emigration and the hopes of Patriarch Alexis II, who had himself been an emigre. For now the Russian Church is looking to Africa and Asia.

Some prophesy that since 1991 Russia has been condemned to wander in the wilderness for forty years, but that it will be led out to the Promised Land by its Moses-like Saints and only then, in about 2030, will a Tsar come. Only then will come renewed interest and the awaited Great Cleansing of the Church. Indeed, over the last thirty-five years the Vatican-style homosexualisation of the Moscow episcopate has been accompanied by pseudo-intellectualism, ecumenism and financial corruption a la Alfeev. The abandonment of the Western world by Moscow and its reduction to ghetto nationalism has left a vacuum in its discipline. This is being filled in part by the CIA takeover of the New York branch of the Russian Church, with its sectarian doctrine of the rebaptism not only of Catholics and Protestants, but also of other Orthodox Christians.

The Greek Rejection of a Western European Orthodox Church

This new self-imposed irrelevance of all parts of the Russian Church to the foundation of a new Local Church of Western Europe repeats the same self-imposed irrelevance of the Greek Church of Constantinople. The latter also turned its back on a Western European Local Church, though several decades ago, as a result of Greek nationalism. We remember many, many incidents of such nationalism over the last sixty years, with Western Europeans being told by Greek archbishops and priests to ‘go away’ (in fact, much less politely than that) or being told to ‘join the Anglicans’ or ‘become a Catholic’. One well-known Cypriot ‘spiritual father’, who possessed a doctorate, informing us that Orthodoxy only exists because of Plato and Aristotle, ‘who are virtually saints’, as without those pagan Greeks ‘there would never have been any Christianity’!

Over the last sixty years the Vatican-style homosexualisation of the episcopate of Constantinople has gone hand in hand with the same pseudo-intellectualism, ecumenism and financial corruption, this time, a la Zisioulas. It is curious to see how these four phenomena are always interconnected in both Churches. The recent revelation, long-rumoured, that the CIA paid the Phanar $15 million (in fact $20 million, but the corrupt Kiev regime filched $5 million for its own slush fund) to found their fake gangster Church in the Ukraine is symbolic of the spiritual decadence. After all, the CIA escorted under threat of death Patriarch Maximos V to Switzerland in 1948, since when the City has indeed been lost, captive to politicking. Only a new Patriarch can ‘retire’ all the homosexual bishops and cleanse the Phanar, in effect refounding the Patriarchate.

Conclusion: The Input of the Romanian Orthodox Church

With both the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox worlds fallen to political nationalism in the last few years, and without hope, for now, of restoring the old multinational catholicity of Russian Orthodoxy, now out of communion with many other Orthodox, who can we local Orthodox look to? Abandoned by Greeks and Russians alike, the responsibility for the possible foundation of a future Western European Orthodox Church falls for now to the second largest Local Orthodox Church, the Romanian, if only because of its size.

The Romanian language is not only a Latin language which uses the Latin alphabet, but the Romanian Orthodox Church is also in communion with all the Local Churches, unlike the Greeks and the Russians. The Romanian Church is also by far the largest in Western Europe, with 5 million baptised, 1,153 churches and 10 bishops. However, a future new Local Church must encompass all Orthodox, inclusively, non-politically and non-nationalistically. This can only come in an alliance of Churches, in the spirit of catholicity of the whole Church.

 

 

The Third Anniversary of our Adherence to the Romanian Patriarchate and the 2012 Icon of All the Saints of the British Isles and Ireland

On Sunday 16 February we recalled the third anniversary of our acceptance by His Eminence Metropolitan Joseph into the Romanian Patriarchate with gratitude to God. This has protected us from having to obey many uncanonical acts, which would naturally have divided our multinational community.

In celebration of this we have had 100 A2 prints of the 2012 Icon of All the Local Saints printed in high definition on high quality paper and framed in a golden frame. These are being given out for free to the very many parishes which have supported us over the last three years. If any individuals would like a copy – but A2 is very large for a home – it will cost £25, but it cannot be posted.

On the Third Anniversary of our Freedom from Persecution 2022-2025: The Thirteen Reasons Why We Took Canonical Refuge in the Romanian Orthodox Church after Nearly Fifty Years of Faithfulness to the Russian Orthodox Church

Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake (Matthew 5,11) 

Foreword

Although the statement below concerns the 5,000 of us directly, it could also be used as part of a more general study in order to understand the process of how a Persecuted Church became a Persecuting Church, how an organism for Love became a narrow and judgemental sect which professed Hatred which enjoys trying to close churches. It is a psychiatric tragedy.

Some Recent History

https://roarch.org.uk/parishes-england/

The Romanian Orthodox Church is not much bothered by PR and websites. It updates its website once every ten years. For some reason, this cyberworld information is highly important to newcomers, whereas the well-circulated photographs of our letter of acceptance of 16 February 2022, issued by the Chancellery of our Metropolia on 18 February 2022, and of our antimension, signed by Metropolitan Joseph and issued to our parish on 27 February 2022, and our belonging to the Romanian Orthodox Church, witnessed to by the multinational crowds following the litanies and the Great Entrance at every Divine Liturgy, are not adequate evidence of which Local Church we belong to!

The fact that a certain bishop broke his promise to a Metropolitan that he would issue letters of release and then told people publicly that we had not been received into the Romanian Orthodox Church, when we clearly had been, despite that bishop’s clerical maladministration, is on his conscience, not on ours. Similarly, the mistake of those who believed that ‘error’, without checking to find out the truth, and then supported and repeated that ‘error’, is also on their conscience, not on ours. Shall we be kind and just say that they had been misinformed? This is why we have had so many instances of myrrh-giving icons in our main church since the Feast of the Ascension in 2022, as has been recorded in our monthly newsletters. Our God is the God of Mercy and Justice.

Thus, at one fell swoop, a newcomer to ROCOR hounded out of it one of its largest families, 28 people of four generations, who had devoted their lives to ROCOR. The scandal became international, discrediting ROCOR. Among those expelled was one of the ten speakers of the 2006 Fourth All-Diaspora Council in San Francisco, whose speech had been so warmly greeted then and who had belonged to the Church before that newcomer was even born. However, since the newcomer had not belonged to ROCOR in 2006, but instead was then actively supporting a move by the Russian Church to join Constantinople, he would not know that.

None of this should be a surprise, since the New ROCOR had already excommunicated another of the ten speakers and yet another had left to join the Moscow Patriarchate. Seven to go. Who is next? How many more of the remaining faithful will be expelled by the New ROCOR for the ‘crime’ (that is what they called it) of remaining faithful to the Old ROCOR? They persecuted St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, suspended him and put him on trial. Why not do the same to his spiritual grandchildren as well?

It seems as though the New ROCOR is reneging on our long and hard-fought fight to enter back into canonical communion with the rest of the Russian Church, which culminated in our victory of 2007. With its history of support for Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s, support for the Vlasovtsy, those Russians who fought with Hitler against Russia, with its CIA bishops and priests, and now with their support for the CIA-orchestrated Kiev regime, which so persecutes Metr Onufry, should we be surprised? I am sometimes asked if I support Moscow or Kiev in the conflict in the Ukraine. I always answer the same thing: I support Metr Onufry and the Ukrainian and Russian peoples and always have done.

The Thirteen Reasons

  1. The principal reason why we were forced to leave and take refuge in the Romanian Orthodox Church, is simply so that we would no longer be in an unthinkable schism from the Russian Church, specifically from the Archdiocese of Western Europe of the Russian Tradition, in which we have had so many close family and friends in Paris for many decades. (It is also true that in the Romanian Church, we are no longer in schism with the Greek Churches either. We shall probably never recover from the shock of that bishop’s accusation that Patriarch Bartholomew is ‘possessed by demons’ Was he talking about himself?). His schism from the Russian Church, is exactly what we wanted to escape by taking canonical refuge in the Romanian Orthodox Church.

For nearly fifty years we had fought for the unity of the Russian Church, very actively and very successfully and were thanked personally by the Russian Patriarch for doing so. And then we saw it all destroyed by a very young and inexperienced convert newcomer from far away, who, a creator of schism, accused us of being schismatic and then of being senile! We have once more been able to live canonically, following the theological royal way and the canonical golden mean, away from all extremes.

For three years we have been in communion with and concelebrated with all Orthodox, including with the Russian Church, except for the tiny ROCOR, now reduced to a handful of miniscule communities here. Communion is the sign and guarantee that we are inside the Church and not outside the Church, inside some pathological, Protestant-style, convert sect and cult. For some reason this sect has been protected by ‘misinformed’, but still unrepentant and unapologetic individuals above it. That too is on their conscience, not on ours.

  1. In the Romanian Orthodox Church we do not rebaptise other Orthodox, which is a heresy.
  2. The Romanian Orthodox Church does not ‘defrock’ the clergy of other Local Churches.
  3. In the Romanian Orthodox Church we can love everyone, specifically we do not have to hate Greeks, refusing to recognise their saints because they are in ‘the wrong jurisdiction’!, ‘hate’ Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians and ‘half-hate’ Moldovans, as we were strongly recommended, but categorically refused, to do, for we strive to obey the Gospel commandments of Christ and not obey a schismatic.
  4. In the Romanian Orthodox Church over the last three years we have been able to keep all our churches open and serve our multinational parishioners in our missions at our own cost, just as we had done for decades before.
  5. For the last three years we have been allowed to speak and use in services our own childhood English language and do not have to pretend to be Americans in our speech, as we were bullied and pressured, but categorically refused, to do.
  6. For the last three years our websites have no longer been subject to rigid, word-for-word censorship and micromanagement, as we have had the wonderful basic human right to free speech, of which we had been punitively deprived for four months under a Calvinistically jealous dictatorship.
  7. For the last three years we have not had to participate in slandering faithful clergy and laypeople of other Local Churches, which we categorically refused to do.
  8. We have no longer had to deal with one who suffered in his spoilt child syndrome from violent bouts of temper and jealousy and wanted to divide and destroy solid families, setting generation against generation and hating women and children, upsetting many women with his ugly remarks.
  9. We have no longer had to pay 10% of our income and be subjected to fits of rage, shouting that we must pay even more and also hear slanders that we are thieves, all so that someone could live like a mini-oligarch. Membership of our self-governing Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of Western Europe and its local Archdiocese is free.
  10. We have no longer belonged to a small, out-of-control group, which is faced with having to pay millions of dollars in court cases which it is losing to individuals whom it has slandered, and which is also sundered by multiple scandals concerning rebaptism of other Orthodox, ‘defrocking’ clergy of other Local Churches, lack of financial transparency, the use of electronic signatures without authorisation, alcoholism and homosexuality.
  11. We have no longer had to live under an oppressive system where priestly awards are deliberately withheld from the most senior clergy for many, many years, for reasons of sadistic hatred and bullying jealousy, as though we were donkeys who wanted to follow decorative carrots.
  12. We have been allowed to be Christians, free to keep our integrity and obey our conscience. We have been able to act according to our Orthodox Christian principles, as for nearly fifty years before, in the old and noble Western European ROCOR Tradition of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, which they have all but destroyed, except inside the Romanian Orthodox Church, where we faithfully conserve it. This freedom comes from the fact that our Romanian bishops are, like us, also Christians, and do not punish or persecute us.

Why to the Romanian Orthodox Church?

Some people ask us, all the 15 clergy and 5,000 people in our six parishes who left ROCOR because it refused to listen to us about its schism, punished us for telling them the truth about it, and refused to listen to us who endured this shameful betrayal of the best friends that the Russian Church has ever had, why we joined the Romanian Church specifically. The answer to this is simple:

The Greek Church of the Patriarchate of Constantinople was for us not an option, despite some wonderful clergy and people there, not least on Mt Athos, as certain members of its episcopate had compromised themselves through their uncanonical actions in the Ukraine and through their ecumenism. Joining the Greek Church would therefore have been very divisive among our flock. As for the Serbian Church, we greatly respect it, as we do all other Local Churches, but we did not think of joining any of them, as we could have done, because we do not have any direct connections with their bishops, only with their priests.

There was only one obvious solution, the Romanian Church. We have always valued our contacts with the Romanian Tradition of Life via Fr Raphael Noica and others. Since 2001 we have had Romanian parishioners and these have increased in number since. As a result, we had a Romanian parishioner ordained priest and a Moldovan parishioner ordained deacon some years ago. We are pastors, not nationalists, and are here to serve the Orthodox people, whatever their nationality, English, Russian, Ukrainian, Moldovan, Romanian or other.

We do not conduct passport checks at the door. Perhaps that is why the number of our parishioners of all nationalities has doubled in the last three years since we left ROCOR. Nor are we capitalists, who sell vastly overpriced candles, icons, prayer books and other Church items to their own, often poor, people. We run the cheapest Church shop in the country. It is a service, not a source of excessive profit. We do not exploit the Orthodox people.

In the last 12 years 1 million Romanians have come to live in this country. Today at least 70% of all Orthodox in this country are Romanians. Go to any church in this country and the children are almost certain to be Romanian. Children are our future. And young priests have been temporarily loaned by the Romanian Church to the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Antioch, which are both desperately short of young clergy.

Moreover, the Romanian bishops have a clear pastoral sense of how important it is to keep the children in the Church and are very happy to use the local languages to do so. All our bishops speak Western European languages fluently – unlike most Russian bishops. Clearly, if we believe in a future Local Church, as we always have done, it makes sense to be part of by far the largest group of Orthodox, as long as it is politically free, which was the case of very few Local Churches 35 years ago, but which is no longer the case today, except for two of them.

It also makes sense to belong to a Local Church which allows us to conserve the Tradition and calendar of the Old Western European ROCOR, as we are able. The view of the late Metr Kallistos (Ware) ten years ago was quite rightly that ROCOR’s ascetic and liturgical heritage should be valued. Sadly, it has been ignored by them and taken over by ritualism and the pharisaical condemnation of others, turning this heritage into an opportunity for even further spiritual pride and censoriousness. As for us, we keep to the saints of the Old ROCOR of the Confessors, like St John of Shanghai, whom they now condemn, as he did not dress in expensive clothing and footwear and did not live in an elite apartment.

In 2022 we left the Russian Church to its nationalism, where the earthly kingdom is higher than the heavenly kingdom and Caesar’s is tragically confused with God’s. It has indeed renounced the multinational ethos which it had in the past. Too bad for it. We pray that Moscow, like Constantinople, will recover. Providentially we were integrated into the Romanian Orthodox Church exactly eight days before the longstanding Ukrainian-Russian conflict reached a new level of militancy on 24 February 2022. Thus, we avoided the Russian-Ukrainian division and so were able to answer all the threats of violence and hatred that were sent to us after that date, as well as the unnecessary offer of police protection, as well as invitations to support the Nazis in Kiev, by simply answering that we in the Romanian Orthodox Church have nothing to do with internal conflicts and politics inside the Russian Church.

With the result that our many Russian and Ukrainian parishioners can and do pray for one another side by side. Precisely from within the Romanian Orthodox Church, the second largest Local Church and which speaks a Latin language and uses the Latin alphabet, we can perhaps play a role in healing the schism between Russians and Greeks, which stems from the fact that neither is politically free. We are neutral. For we are pastors, not politicians.

We recall how the Greeks started the schism in the Ukraine by opening churches on Russian canonical territory. Then the Russians made it worse, firstly by cutting off communion, a very radical act which made the Russian Church look schismatic, then by poaching churches, priests and people from the Greek jurisdiction without letters of release, and then, in revenge, by opening churches on Greek canonical territory in Africa. This is like two little boys fighting. When will this end?

Afterword

Can we, in concert with the other politically free Local Churches, be intermediaries and help to bring sense and peace, in the spirit of the catholicity of the whole Orthodox Church? We pray so, through the prayers of all the New Martyrs and Confessors, of the Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian and Greek Lands and of all the Lands of the Earth.

16 February 2025

Our Archbishop Athanasius of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

The Most Reverend Athanasius of Bogdania, Vicar Bishop of the Diocese of Italy, was elected on Friday 25 October to the dignity of the Romanian Orthodox Archbishop of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The newly elected Archbishop of Great Britain is 42 years old and has been a bishop of the Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church since May 2018.

He was born on 17 January 1982 in Chisinau in the Republic of Moldova, being the first of the two sons of Eugen and Ala Rusnac and also speaks Russian. He has held Romanian citizenship since 12 October 2010.

He was tonsured monk on 8 December 2008 and then was ordained deacon. On 16 April 2009 he became a priest for the chapel of the Diocesan Centre and the Dormition Monastery in Rome. Between 2009 and 2018 he served at the ‘Dormition of the Virgin Mary’ Chapel next to the Diocesan Centre in Rome.

On 15 February 15 2018, he was elected Vicar Bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Italy, with the title of Bogdania , and on 1 May he was consecrated bishop.

Archbishop Athanasius was an engineer. He studied between 2000 and 2005 at INSA Lyon (Institut National des Sciences Appliqués de Lyon – France). He obtained the degree of Engineer with a Master’s degree, his speciality – Telecommunications and Networks. He also followed a specialisation internship in the field of IT (MT Systems – Lyon, France).

Between 2006 and 2010, he attended the ‘Saint-Serge’ Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Paris, as did Fr Andrew Phillips, but that was over 25 years earlier. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in pastoral theology in 2010. Between 2010 and 2012, he attended a Master’s course in Practical Theology (Canon Law), at the Faculty of Theology ‘Andrei Șaguna’ in Sibiu. Master’s thesis – ‘Principles of Canon Theology in the Diaspora, with special reference to Italy’.

The Archdiocese of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as the Diocese of Ireland and Iceland, were established on 29 February 2024. The new dioceses are part of the Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe.

There are over a million Romanians living in Great Britain who currently have 100 parishes, branches and Orthodox missions, as well as three monasteries.

An article from 2020

The life story of the hierarch baptised at the age of eight. From Communism to the Italian diaspora.

The youngest Romanian hierarch, Bishop Atanasie de Bogdania, turned 38 on Friday 17 January 2020. The hierarch gave an interview in which he talks about the story of his life, beyond the already known biography during his almost two years of service as Vicar Bishop of the Diocese of Italy.

Bishop Atanasie de Bogdania was born in Chisinau during the atheist Communist regime and was baptised around the age of eight along with his brother and father. He first became an engineer in Telecommunications and Networks in France, and then a monk in Italy, being a close disciple of Metropolitan Joseph of Western and Southern Europe and of Bishop Silouan of Italy.

His Eminence’s father was a university professor, and his mother worked in a publishing house, things that did not allow them to have visible faith in society. Both the wedding of the parents and the baptism of the children took place after 1990.

‘My father, after Communism fell, with great joy went to the first church he came across, a place of worship that had recently opened because the vast majority of churches had been closed, and asked the priest to marry him. The father, being an experienced minister, asked him: ‘Are you baptised?’, «No!», «But children?», «No children are baptised!».

“In this context, all three of us were baptised: me, my brother, the current deacon Mircea and my father. Shortly after, the parents got married,” recalls the hierarch.

“So, the first encounter with God consciously took place right when I received the Sacrament of Baptism at the age of 8. I remember the gestures that the priest made, the songs from the choir, the emotion of the people who surrounded us, that “How many of you have been baptized in Christ, have also clothed yourselves in Christ”, all of this left a mark on me”.

The Archbishop says that the Most Reverend Metropolitan Joseph and the Most Reverend Bishop Silouan formed him.

“At that time I was young, at 18 I arrived in France and with other colleagues from the INSA Lyon Faculty we went together to monasteries, churches and meetings with young people organised by the parishes. Such great openness, the natural way in which the hierarchs behaved, the way in which they approached people, opened in me this leaning towards Theology”.

This was followed by theological studies and various ministries within the EORI (Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of Italy): Diocesan Secretary, Administrative Counsellor, Exarch of the Monasteries and Diocesan Vicar.

On 15 February 2018, the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church elected him Vicar Bishop of the Diocese of Italy, with the title “of Bogdania”. The consecration took place on 1 May 2018 in Rome.

His Eminence defines his ministry in Italy as a “family” one and relies heavily on the closeness between the clergy and the faithful.

“I try to spend as much time as possible in the territory, that’s why I feel close to the priests, with whom I have a very good relationship. I was godfather to many at their ordination, some I trained with, others I trained and I think we are a real family”.

“This is what I would like in the future: to be a family, together to carry the achievements, but also the hardships. I would like us to be as responsible as we have been until now, that is, to work together for our salvation.”

Although he has been a bishop since 2018, His Eminence has served for ten years in the administration of the Diocese of Italy. “During the ten years of activity, much has been done materially, but the biggest achievement is that our churches are full, people love and seek the Church. That is why our responsibility is very, very big. But in the family everything goes together, both good and bad, to the glory of God”.

 

Archdiocesan Assembly of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Great Britain and Northern Ireland

On the afternoon of 13 October all four clergy from Colchester and two lay delegates went to our new St George’s Cathedral in Enfield. Here we were met by nearly 200 delegates from the Romanian and Moldovan parishes in England and Wales and the seven bishops who form the Synod of the Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe. There are 870 parishes and many monasteries and convents in the Metropolia. Twenty years ago there was only one bishop and thirty parishes. Today there are sixty parishes in Rome and ten parishes in London alone. Of the seven bishops at present, there are three bishops in France (one of them is French), two in Italy and two in Spain and Portugal.

Altogether nearly four million people who belong to the Metropolia, as the Romanian and Moldovan Diaspora is over four times larger than all the other Orthodox put together. The number of Orthodox in the Romanian Archdiocese in England is now over 1.2 million, including the children born here. Vladyka Joseph said that there are 24 qualified candidates to be ordained in Great Britain, where there are already 100 parishes and in years to come there will be hundreds more.

Vladyka spoke of the need to unite others into the Archdiocese of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of all nationalities. The main aim of the meeting was to announce the two candidates to be Archbishop here next year. The two announced were Bishop Theophil and Bishop Athanasy. The latter is Moldovan and is Russian-speaking.

First Orthodox Monastery in Scotland for 1,000 Years

First Orthodox monastery on Scottish Islands in 1,000 years consecrated on the Isle of Mull

Amid the latest terrible scandal surrounding a certain Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church, which broke last weekend, and which follows the same scandal with a still unpunished and protected ROCOR bishop, God sends us consolation. The long-overdue Great Cleansing will follow and all will be revealed. Woe unto you, scribes, pharisees and hypocrites! Repentance begins in Scotland.

Communiqué: New Decisions of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church

Published by Andrei Ursulean

On Thursday 29 February 2024 a working session of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church took place in the Great Hall of Theoctist the Patriarch in the Palace of the Patriarchate, under the Presidency of His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel.

The main decisions of the Holy Synod are as follows:

  1. The declaration in the Patriarchate of Romania of 2025 as the commemorative year of the centenary of the Patriarchate of Romania and the commemorative year of the Romanian Orthodox priests and confessors of the 20th century.
  2. The establishment of a Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Great Britain, based in London, for the more than the 1 million Romanian Orthodox believers in this part of Western Europe.
  3. The establishment of a Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Ireland and Iceland, based in Dublin.
  4. We recall the position of the Romanian Orthodox Church with regard to political life and electoral campaigns that, in the context of the 2024 electoral year, the Church is not involved in party politics, because, according to Article 7 Para. 1 of Law No. 489/2006 on religious freedom and the general regime of cults, recognised cults are factors of social peace and any attitude of public enmity in society, of political partisanship, of attacking persons or straining relations with public authorities are contrary to the spiritual mission of the Church in society.
  5. Approval of the December and January volumes of the Synodal Lives of the Saints of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
  6. Approval of the Akathist of the Holy Unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian of Asia (November 1).
  7. Approval of the Akathist of Saint Gerasim of Cephalonia (October 20).
  8. Approval of the Service to the Holy Unmercenaries Cyrus and John (January 31, June 28).
  9. The organisation from 1-31 March 2024 of a collection in the Romanian Patriarchate to help build homes in Armenia for Armenian refugees from Nagorno Karabakh.
  10. A reminder of the fact that, through the Financial Control and Audit Body of Dioceses, Metropolias and the Patriarchate of Romania the Church authorities audit the financial and property statements of parishes, dioceses and metropolitans and, in the event that deficiencies are found, they adopt measures to remedy them, for the correct application of which the Metropolitan Synod, respectively the Permanent Synod, are responsible; the respective Financial Control and Audit Bodies must be staffed with experienced specialists (economists and financial auditors), who are characterised by fairness, professionalism and faithfulness to the Church.
  11. We bless, encourage and support the initiatives of Romanian Orthodox communities in Ukraine to restore communion with the Mother Church, the Patriarchate of Romania, through their legal organisation in the religious structure called the Romanian Orthodox Church of the Ukraine.
  12. We reaffirm the fact that all Romanian Orthodox clergy and pastors from the Republic of Moldova who return to the Metropolia of Bessarabia are canonical clergy and blessed believers and any disciplinary sanction directed against them on the grounds of their membership of the Romanian Orthodox Church is considered null and void, according to the Synodal Decision No. 8090 of 19 December 19 1992.
  13. We appreciate the rich social and charitable activity of the Romanian Orthodox Church during the year 2023, which have had visible positive effects in Romanian society.

Chancellery of the Holy Synod